ingvild | Entries tagged with recs

So, after a lot of time and much nagging on my part, my off-line friend just finished Gundam Wing. As the end credits of Endless Waltz rolled, she turned to me, bright-eyed and hopeful (yes you were. Don't argue) and asked if there was any good after-the-series fic around. And with heavy heart I had to answer truthfully: "No".

This is a slight exaggeration. Manifestations was, and has remained, one of the best fanfics I've ever read. But in general, Gundam Wing fandom can be broken down like this (at least it seems so):

Half haven't seen the show (1/2)
Half of the rest saw it once 15 years ago when they were 12 and didn't understand anything, and don't remember anything now (1/4)
Half of who's left remember how it went, but don't care (1/8)
And of the final 1/8, those who remember canon and care, half are too scared to go against fanon, 1/4 have been scared away, and 1/4 try but are drowned out.

Also, me rediscovering het due to GW nonwithstanding, this isn't the right fandom to not be interested in yaoi in.

So...a canon-compatible, after-the-series not-yaoi fic. Any recs?

Over to my current time-waster: Nanoha. Yeah, big surprise.

One thing I think is fun is to see how different people make different fanvids to the same song with the same show. I didn't realise I thought that was fun until I found three Nanoha vids using the song "Gong" by JAM Project (this is apparently the opening song to one of the Super Robot Wars games).

GONG
1
2
3

Here's another one from the same group:
SKILL
1
2
3

Also, I wonder if they've made a Nanoha for every damn Gundam opening there is. Omnicat, this one's for you. (They cleaned up some of the Nanoha animation for the DVD version, BTW. This is the TV version in all its hilarity.)

BTW: Shining Buster?

Today, I’m going to talk about a show that everyone should watch – the anime Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.

( Hypothetical questions and answers beneath the cut )

My resolution: Post something once a week.

...

Here, have some webcomics recommendations:

Girl Genius

I'm not sure how to describe Girl Genius without spoiling the story, but I'll give it a shot. It's a steampunk (or "gaslamp fantasy", as the creators put it) story set in sort-of Europe. Their tag-line is that "Mad scientists rule the world. Badly." Basically, a lot of people in this world have "The Spark", which allows them to invent the strangest things in a fit of madness. Some families where the Spark is hereditary rule cities or large territories. Among these families are the Sturmavoraus family of Sturmhaven, the Heterodynes of Mechanicsburg (the last Heterodynes, Bill and Barry, went missing (as well as Bill's wife), and are now the stuff of legends and fairy tales), and of course, Baron Wulfenbach, the current head of an empire, and his son Gilgamesh.

The story follows young Agatha Clay, a student at the university in Beetleburg and everything that happens after the Baron comes to see her professor, a clank (a sort of steam-powered robot) runs berserk in town, and her locket - an heirloom from her uncle - is stolen.

Gunnerkrigg Court

This story takes place in a boarding school the size of a city. The school is focused on science, while more natural, magical beings live in the forest beyond. The students are not allowed to go there.

We follow protagonist Anitmony Carver, who came to the school after her mother died. Antimony is a strange girl who rarely lets her emotions show. Having been raised in a hospital, she's not too used to socialising either. Luckily, her best friend Kat(erina) Donlan makes up for it.

Antimony (or "Annie", as Kat calls her) meets a lot of people in school, human and otherwise, who knew her mother. She makes friends with a not-scary ghost and a shadow who wants to return to the forest (and since Annie isn't allowed to cross the bridge, she builds a robot to help it - out of parts she found in a room marked "spare robot parts"). There's a lot of weirdness going on - Annie treats the mystical weirdness as normal, while Kat treats the mechanical weirdness as normal.

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

...Do I really need to describe this? He's a doctor. And a ninja. Of Irish ancestry. His family are ninja too. He has a gorilla receptionist, his mentor is a Benjamin Franklin clone, and his sidekick (who is twelve) grew a mustache through willpower. He's fought pirates, zombie ninja and Dracula.

Best quote: "You lit yourself. On fire. Why did you light yourself on fire?"
"Huh? Seriously? Because. They can't grab me if I'm on fire."

Something for everyone!

And here comes the block of anime I've watched some of, and hope to finish one day...I just don't know when.

Gundam series
(I'm slowly working my way through all the Gundam series.)

Mobile Suit Gundam
The original Gundam series. Once I got over the sheer 1979-80's of it, and they changed the intro song, it was really, really engaging.

The 08th MS Team
Takes place during the original series, but was made in the late 90's. I watched this with the Anime Society at York University, but missed the first three episodes and a couple in the middle. It places a lot of emphasis on making the suits seem realistic.

Gundam Seed
I like the storytelling and the animation, and the characters are mostly engaging - but it's just so depressing!

Non-Gundam Series

Azumanga Daioh!
This is weird. It's sort of like a sketch show about a group of high school girls and them being weird. Something I can watch an episode of now and then just to unwind.

Cardcaptor Sakura
So far it looks good, but I haven't watched much of it, only the first couple episodes. I got distracted.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
I'm a bit put off by Haruhi's casual molestation, and it's very confusing when the episodes aren't in chronological order. I wonder if I should give up and find out the chronological order to watch them in instead of wondering what the heck is going on.

Neon Genesis Evangelion
I actually stopped watching this not because of the brain-breaking weirdness (I didn't really get that far), but because I bought the first two DVDs on sale and couldn't find the rest (this was when I was on dial-up, so watching online was out of the question (I only buy series if I know I like them)). But if I stopped watching Gundam Seed because it was depressing, I don't know how I'll survive Evangelion.

Sailor Moon
The only reason I stopped after episode one is that it would be harder to stop later on, and the length of it - 200 episodes - intimidate me.

Wolf's Rain
I like the mythology of the series, the worldbuilding and the characters. I can't see how it would possibly end in something other than sadness, though, so I'm hesitant to continue.

There it is! Anyone have any reccommendations?

Luckily, I'd already learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to never dismiss a show based on the name, so I didn't hesitate with this show, and you shouldn't either. Watch it, you'll be doing yourself a favour.

Princess Tutu

Once upon a time, the brothers Grimm and H.C. Andersen met, had a fine meal consisting of ballet, magical girls and metatext, and then they had a love child.

Uhm. Maybe not.

How about: I was skeptical after the first three episodes, so I stopped for a while, then watched more, and finished the show in two days, waited a week, wathced it again, and waited another week - so now I've seen it three times in less than four weeks.

Yeah, that doesn't tell you much either. How about I just post the opening narration from the first episode?

Once upon a time, there was a man who died.
The man’s work was the writing and telling of stories, but he could not defy death. The last story he was working on was about a brave and handsome prince who vanquishes a crafty raven. But now, it seems their battle will go on for eternity.
“I’m sick and tired of this!” cried the raven.
“I’m sick and tired of this!” cried the prince as well.
The raven escaped from the pages of the story, and the prince pursued the fell creature. In the end, the prince took out his own heart and sealed the raven away by using a forbidden power.
Just then, a murmur came from somewhere. “This is great!” said the old man who was supposed to have died.

One day a small duck sees the prince dancing alone on a lake. She looks at his sad and lonely eyes and wants to bring his smile back, so the writer - yes, the dead guy - gives her a magic pendant which will let her turn first into a girl, and then into a magical ballerina - the titular Princess Tutu. She sets about locating and returning the shards of the prince's heart.

However, it's not so straightforward. The prince's best friend and girlfriend are not interested in him getting his heart back, and then there's the fact that he didn't exactly break it apart just for fun...

Halfway through the first season, the show changes direction. It changes direction again at the beginning of the second season, and the again halfway through the second season. Just when you think you know what's going on, the show throws you a curveball and everything is challenged - not just for you, but for the characters as well.

Taking the music mostly from classic ballet and programme music (like "Pictures from an Exhibition" and "Scheherazade"), and many of the dances used directly from different ballets as well, the show offers another layer if you're familiar with this, but it's not necessary to understand it.

A total of 26 episodes of pure joy, I can't recommend this show enough.

I want to watch it again.

And here's today's entry.

Ouran High School Host Club

Sometimes just called Ouran Host Club, this series takes every stock character from shoujo romances and plays with them - or comments on them directly through genre savvy characters. 26 episodes long, it's one of those rare comedies that's actually funny.

At Ouran High School, only the richest of the rich attend. Six handsome, bored young men have formed club for entertaining bored young women- tea, conversation, flirting, that sort of thing.

Enter scholarship student Haruhi Fujioka. Haruhi has no time for that sort of thing, not if the scholarship is to be kept. Stumbling onto the Host Club's room was an accident - the first of two: Haruhi breaks an expensive vase and is forced to work off the debt. Practical, down-to-earth Haruhi has no patience for the antics of the Host Club, and can often be heard muttering "rich bastards". It's especially funny when clashing with the Host Club's "King", Tamaki - one memorable scene from episode 1 has Tamaki going on and on about beauty and how it's beautiful people's duty to display it, how to drink tea more elegantly etc., while Haruhi tries to come up with the best word to describe Tamaki, and finally finds it and says it without hesitation: "Obnoxious!"

I really don't have more to say. Just watch the first episode and decide for yourselves.

I forgot to post this yesterday, sorry! I'll do two posts right now.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

Three seasons, the first two with 13 episodes each and the last with 26 episodes. All of them can be seen separately. I think the second season is the best, and I'm not just saying that because I have a massive girlcrush on Signum.

Season one: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

One day, schoolgirl Nanoha finds an injured ferret who's actually the shapechanged young mage and archaeologist Yuuno, who's looking for magical objects called Lost Logia. Nanoha accepts his magical object which is actually a sentient weapon called Raising Heart. She begins looking for the Lost Logia in order to help Yuuno, but they're not the only ones looking...

Season two: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's

Nanoha hopes to reunite with the precious friend she gained last season, but not all is well. Four mysterious people are stealing the Linker Core (magical energy) of magical creatures and people in order to revive a dangerous tome called the Book of Darkness. However, are their intentions truly evil?

Season three: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS

Ten years after the events of the previous seasons, Nanoha is a high-ranking mage for the Time-Space Administration Bureau. Together with her close friends, she forms an elite group meant to respond to emergencies, including Lost Logia cases, and they take on trainees of their own. Of course not everything is peachy. There are uncontrolled Lost Logia around, sinister people, and the trainees have problems of their own...

If you ever wanted to see an early-teen girl shout "Divine Buster!" and let loose enough magical energy to blow out the windows of a building from air pressure alone, this is the show for you. As they put it on TvTropes, it would take a lot less time to list the girls who aren't Action Girls. Seriously, they all kick ass. The show(s) are also notable for the very sympathetic villains. It's a growing up story wrapped in magical action, a magical girl show made for a grown-up audience by a director who wanted to make a mecha series. Like I said, I really like the second season the best, but they're all worth watching.

And now we come to my probably biggest anime obsession. The series I have spent a lot of time writing fic for, discussing, and tried (and failed) to pimp to my sister and friend. (I have managed to pimp other series, and it's a disappointment that they don't share my love for this one.)

Gundam Wing

The Gundam franchise is huge, and counts a lot of series and six or seven different universes. Wing takes place in the After Colony timeline, stands independently of other series, and is the only one I've watched in full (although I'm working on that). It's also got the craziest fandom ever, which people should stay away from if they value their mental health - I entered through the fandom, and I'm still regularly horrified.

In the year AC 175, the pacifist leader of the space colonies, Heero Yuy, was assassinated, and the colonies entered under oppressive Earth Federation rule. Twenty years later, in AC 195, five mobile suits called Gundams are sent to Earth to defeat OZ, which is the military front of the organization responsible for Yuy's death. One of the pilots of these suits has taken the name of the assassinated leader as his own. He makes two important acquaintances his first day: the OZ pilot ace Zechs Marquise, who becomes his arch enemy, and the young daughter of a politician, Relena Darlian.

The story follows the five Gundam pilots, people from the OZ side of things, and Relena as she develops into a political powerhouse of her own. Like all the Gundam series, it takes up themes of war and pacifism.

Gundam Wing has its issues. For one thing, the five pilots are all 15 years old, and are as much terrorists as freedom fighters. The side-changing and political ebb and flow can be extremely confusing - I'm glad I watched it as an adult, I think that made it easier for me to keep track of things. It gets preachy at times, there are loose ends and the dialogue can be vague or stilted (and the English dub really doesn't help matters. I really liked what I've seen of it in Japanese a lot better). With respect to female characters, I often get the feeling that the director's intentions were good it's just that sometimes that's not enough.

And yet, I love this show. It's got fascinating world building, multifaceted characters (no, really) and people changing from meeting other people. The character development is sometimes blatant and sometimes subtle ~~and the fandom ignores it either way~~.

Most of all, though, the show is hopeful. For someone who stopped watching another Gundam series after nine episodes because it was too depressing, that matters a lot.

I'm going to cheat a little today, and rec two animes I haven't watched in a few years. I first watched them early in my anime watching career, and started watching them again recently, but got distracted by life and something shiny (Saturday's entry). So this is going to be fairly brief.

Cowboy Bebop

One of the classic must see animes, Cowboy Bebop is well known for its absolutely fantastic soundtrack. Every episode is named after one style of music, and the soundtrack for the episode is tailored to fit. There are 26 episodes and one movie which fits in between the later episodes. Most of them are standalone, although there is an underlying arc there, if I remember correctly.

It's about a bounty hunter crew living and working from an old space ship called the Bebop, about the bounties they hunt and their pasts. The art is great, the animation fluid and the characters interesting.

Witch Hunter Robin

Another 26 episode show, it begins with a "witch of the week" format and picks up a plotty storyline towards the middle of the show. The show sets up an interesting setting, about how there used to be a coven which disappeared, and now witches have to be kept under control for the good of the rest of the population.

The titular Robin is part of a group of hunters dedicated to tracking and subduing renegade witches. Over time, though, the viewer starts to develop more and more sympathy for these witches, and isn't Robin, with control over fire, one herself? Several of the people on the crew aren't quite what they seem either, and maybe the company itself isn't all that benevolent...

Today begins my anime rec week, where I recommend one different anime series every day. Series only, not movies unless they're a part of the series (I might take on single movies at some later time). The series will be listed alphabetically.

Black Lagoon

This is not a series for the squeamish. There's a lot of blood and killing going on, as well as some T&A (Revy's outfit) and swearing.

In the fictional city of Roanapur, violence rules. The best way not to get killed is to kill the other guy first, or ally yourself with someone who can do it for you. The latter is the option chosen by Rock, a Japanese salaryman who is betrayed by his employers, and ends up giving them the finger and joining the Lagoon Company, a small group (3 people + Rock) of mercenaries.

Black Lagoon has some of the scariest female characters you've ever met. The probable protagonist, Revy, is called Two-Hands because she's ambidextrous with her guns. TvTropes lists her as a "heroic sociopath", which really is an apt description. In an early episode, she takes on an entire boat full of gunmen by herself - with a grin - and wins easily. Don't try to monologue with Revy around - she'll shoot you mid-sentence.

Roberta is a former assassin/guerilla turned maid who'll do anything to get her master's kidnapped son back - including wiping out an entire branch of the Colombian mafia. When she and Revy get in a gunfight Dutch, the leader of the Lagoon company, comments that the two scariest women on the Earth are duking it out, and he has no intention of interfering.

One who's not afraid to interfere, however, is Balalaika, a former Russian military officer who took with her all the men who served under her in Afghanistan (and thus are completely loyal to her) to set up Hotel Moscow, the local branch of the Russian mafia. She also edits porn in her spare time.

Then there's Eda, a nun from the Church of Violence, and I'll leave it at that.

There's 24 episodes over two seasons, and the seasons are again subdivided into arcs, some of them darker than the others, some of them more lighthearted - as lighthearted as Black Lagoon gets, anyway. It's a dark comedy, with some arcs more comedic than the others. Unintended comedy comes in the final arc with the hilariously bad English spoken (apparently it's very good in the manga, though).

Note: While I haven't seen the English dub myself, it's apparently extremely good. They've only dubbed the first season, though.

I first discovered Matt Nute when I read an Authority story he's written called Generator. Matt handles a large cast better than anyone else I've ever seen, he has a solid grasp of characterization, and years in the army gives him a better insight into action sequences than most. He also writes funny stories like Genetic Superiority, World Domination, and a Double Chocolate Mocha Latte To Go, Please (Waterfall should appreciate that one. It's Magneto), and lots of other stories that I will take some time exploring soon. Matt writes Marvel comics, DC, Wildstorm and Vertigo. He's also got a very funny Preacher/X-Files crossover. Matt deserves more appreciation.

http://www.comicfic.net/fic/nute/index.htm

And while we're on it - the archive where I found both Dex and Matt Nute is one of the better ones out there. Unlike so many others, these authors seem to care about characterization, plot and generally making good stories. http://www.comicfic.net/news/

Beaubier writes some of the best Northstar fanfic on the enitre 'net. Her knowledge of his backstory is extensive, and her handling of his character is solid. Not to meniton that the stories are intriguing.

http://beaubier.freeservers.com/

and

http://www.fanfiction.net/~beaubier

FANFIC AUTHORS' APPRECIATION DAY WEEK: March 6 through March 13
Post to your LJ each day at least one of your favorite fanfic authors and why you love them, their work, and why they need more appreciation.

Let's see, I have for the 6, 7 and 8. Let's see if I can get to today.

http://www.themedicinewheel.net/
Minisinoo writes the best Scott fics on the 'net. Period. She's a professional writer, and it shows. You need a few days to get through one of her series, but it's worth it.

http://www.ravenswing.com/~mirrorgirl/index.html
Jane St. Clair has a rather special writing style. There are some of her stories that I don't read because I don't approve of the pairing, but every Alpha Flight and X-Force story she's written, I've read. She's really good.

http://www.thedarkarts.org/authorLinks/Camwyn/Hellblazer_Hogwarts/

And lastly, Camwyn, author of Hellblazer: Hogwarts. Over at Straight To Hell, they commented that this crossover with Harry Potter was better than a lot of the Hellblazer comics had been.

Kerjen http://www.kerjen.net/ writes the best Spock/Saavik fiction on the 'net. She's got elaborate histories, mirror universe stories, and stories featuring their remarkably rounded children that she made up. Absolutely worth a read.

Since I started this a bit late, I thought maybe I should add one more fanfic author.

Dex has written the possibly best Hellblazer/BtVS crossover on the 'net. I love this story, and I keep reccing it everywhere I think someone who'll be interested in it will find it. I also like his Authority/Preacher/Hellblazer/X-Men story, Last Call. It's brilliant. I want to read all his stuff sometime soon. http://www.comicfic.net/fic/dex/index.htm

In honour of good fanfiction week, I present to you:

http://members.aol.com/MacedonPg/index.html

Macedon. He no longer writes, and I've only read the stories that involve Jake Sisko, but DAMN! I sat up until half past midnight and put off a lot of required reading for these stories. It's the sort of stories that make you think that maybe, just maybe, all Trek fanfic isn't just crapfic.

In other news: My parents are weird. Mum was talking about global languages and such, and mentioned something about German and Goethe's Faust and how that was still important as long as the people who read it decide school curriculums, and dad disagreed - at which point my mother said that "You're completely infected by the anti-intellectualism of the political left". Dad couldn't let that lie, so he stood up on his chair and started singing opera. Two lines from Faust in German.

I love my family.